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Topic: Downloading Music and Rights (Read 47445 times)

I do not understand the logic why because of no money is involved the product quality would be low ?....there is no evidence for that. your logic must be based on an short-term perception... In the future the whole humanity will work together in open source projects on an non-commercial basis, this has been proven that this is the most creative and best way to create software....prove me wrong... I think is the right path to go.

Ι definitely have my doubts about that, although I see it as an interesting perspective, that still hasn't grown up so much as to convince me that it's a viable solution for the future. Profit has been the deciding factor for the formation of the whole western society, including the arts, and in the presence of capitalist economy, will continue to do. Music is not exactly operating systems anyway... as for the rest you've written, it will have to wait for another day, goodnight for now.

it is now cheaper then ever to create your own music, since the digital studio almost everyone can afford and home studio. People like me can't afford nothing, no cds at all almost, and no software. So in my case I would not be able to record any music at all if it wasn't for piracy.

You contradict yourself here, you say its so cheap but then claim that you can't pay for it so the only way to get it is to steal it, there is another alternative. When I was your age (I am assuming you are in your early 20s) I also could not afford all most anything, CDs, musical instruments, etc. So what did I do? I took classes at the local school to learn and use the instruments they had. I went to our local library to listen to music that I couldn't afford. Finally I did what many others have done, I got a job to buy the gear with money for said job. You obviously had some money as you have a computer to run the software on. If you continue to steal software and not pay for it then myself and others who do pay for it will have to pay more for our software in the future to make up for your selfishness. Or, the software might come with some form of dongle device (like a big hardware box) that requires it to work. In other words you'll have to buy hardware again like I had to when I was your age.

And when we are talking about pirate copies and financial losses, it is very important to clearly we are talking about an POTENTIAL loss,

You seem to be assuming that all downloads are from people who would not buy a CD in the first place. If this was the case then CD sales would not have tanked like they have with the introduction of high quality downloads. There is enough empirical evidence to indicate there is a connection between the two. As a personal example, when Terraform was released on CD the sales were much lower then expected based upon previous sales of my own releases and Steve Roach's normal sales for a new release. We found shortly after the album was released that someone had made high quality mp3s (320kps) of the tracks, had scanned all the artwork including the front cover, inside foldout, the extra postcards, and the CD itself. All were then zipped into a file and uploaded to a bittorrent site. This was the first case any of us has encountered of this kind. You could argue that no one was interested so they didn't buy the CD, well thousands of people were interested enough to at least download it. I won't argue that all of those thousands of download were potential sales, but sales have been so low that the label has yet to recoup its costs, and this has made it difficult for me now to release any new material.

I have not interest to support labels in the future, we need to get rid of this middle hand, since the money gets in the wrong pocket, the artist is the one who should get the most part of the profit.

I think getting rid of labels is a bad idea, not all labels are bad. Good labels work with the artist, they provide services that help them and work more as an artist collective then a monolithic machine. One thing they can provide is a cheaper way of producing product. If they come to a replicator with several projects they can get a cheaper rate. If they have several artists they can get better distribution, etc. I think the irony of this whole free download thing is itís made the large labels even bigger. They have slowly bought each other out to the point their are only 2 or 3 big labels which in the long run has hurt music with less competition. Less competition means less chance for interesting music to be heard. Its also forced the large labels into a corner like posture, which has fueled the whole attack on p2p sights. I think the piratebay people are seeing this first hand.

However, as I said, unless you have talent like Roach and do not own your own label, these is no way you can survive on cd sells, that is the reality. Some pocket money from cd sells will not help. If you have your own label and release many cds

Just so you know Steve's label is actually a joint project with Projekt Records for many of the reasons I stated above.

I advocate copyright, in the sense that if a person have done something he or she should be associated with the work and no on else, I see this is an fundamental right and important. This protection is important since it gives you the right to own the rights to your work.

If you believe this then you should allow the artist to control how they wish to have their art consumed. If artists wanted to have their music downloaded freely then their is nothing stopping them from putting it up on a website and letting any one download as they wish. Since most artist don't do this, or do this on a limited basis then they have made a choice that they do not wish to have unlimited access at such a high level.

In my youth I had a great interest in utopian societies, I've read quite a few books on all kinds of utopias (including a few distopias), had endless debates, some friends and I even considered the possibility of starting a small commune. I should also point out that I am not a strong believer in that capitalism is the best of all worlds and am open to the possibility that their maybe something better. Having said that most of the utopian projects that are currently out there will probably never see the real light of day in our lifetimes. They are at best -- like the Venus project -- centuries away from even a remote possibility of reality. So I think its very unfair to us musicians (who make the most affordable of all the arts) to have to bare the burden of dragging everyone into these utopian dream worlds. Its not going to happen in one little corner, itís going have to happen in a broader forum.

Thanks for your reply, You have to pardon me Loren, I can't reply to every input, cause I have mention what I want to say already in other posts...

Bu regarding the Terraform bit torrent. 1000 downloads does definitely not mean 1000 sales, if I where you I would see it only as promotion, with that assumption that no one buys an album any more without you have heard it on mp3.

Regarding the copyright...I only support non-commercial file sharing and copying, this is why I see the need of copyrights laws still.

Regarding the utopias, I agree sadly it might be no drastic change in the western world and the way we live during our short life time on this planet...I still think that everyone have their own responsibility to support themselves, a part time job is for me the solution, to get involved in the society and the commercial world as little as possible...

Alright enough for today, you have to pardon me if I was too aggressive or anything, I have been drinking some alcohol, it always make me more "open" and straight forward, so do not take it personally.

REMEMBER THIS:The BIG winner in this downloading p2p (etc) frenzy is the BIG internet companies who simply sell access to downloadable files by bandwidth. They are the new capitalists. They of course WANT plenty of free stuff available to download. It's straight money to them.

Same for chinese and russian music download sites that charge a dollar or two per album ... they are riding on the backs of other people's labour. They are what the modern internet leads to and they are the scammers -- they are getting paid for the "free" albums and programs you download

You make it sound like the only reason why internet exist is because of illegal file sharing ?Internet can be used to other things aswell.

Luckily I do not live in usa, so I do not pay for what I download, we have no traffic limit etc.In Sweden we have actually very reasonable price for internet access, to call them greedy or capitalists in not right.

I pay like 40 dollars each month for 100 mbit internet connection, it is worth every penny.... Next Year I got 1000 Mbit

That was a lot of posting today !

Just a quick note on this particular post. (BTW, I pay about the same as you per month for internet in Canada.)You misunderstand me. My point is not that the internet is bad, but that a large sector of the internet is concerned with charging people for content they themselves do not produce, but merely make available and charge access to. Like newsgroups or other ftp sites for example, where the "free" content is not actually free because there is an access charge (plus the initial internet monthly charge). And where there is not an access charge there is a sign-up and advertising revenue to be made by whoever is allowing access to the content. Much of the growth of the internet is via supposedly offering stuff for free ... when its not actually free. To think this model will continue indefinitely is probably naive and very short-sighted.

I think if you start as an artist, you could not expect anything in turn, you ask how the artist is going to survive on music, I think maybe you have wrong expectations, to survive on music is only a dream, and a reality for a very few. To be a musician is not a work, it is not a way to make money as I see it. If you need to pay the bills and get food on the table and still want to be and free/independent music you should take some part time job, maybe a few days each month. Or come up with some other idea. If you accept to live in an lower living standard you really do not need an full time job, a full time job would of course be an total disaster for every creative musician, freedom I think is an important element for every musician, as I have said before, it is an lifestyle.

You misunderstand my words here. I was not asking how would a musician survive on music, I was pointing out that living off the work of others is neither respectful nor freedom. In a way it is the ulimate expression of capitalism - which grew out of the idea of 'benefitting myself at the expense of others'. You may choose to live a less 'luxurious' life but if you do nothing to put energy or life into the society that feeds you are no better than the fatcats that make huge profits out of the labour of others...I know as I have lived that less luxurious life and worked with homeless people, vitims of rape and abuse, animals being experimented upon etc etc. As I explained in my post the anarchistic principle which is the end version of what you describe as the way to be, did not include people living for nothing. It allows for everyone to do what they can and recieve what they need without laws, financial exchange or any form of 'control' - everything could be free in the sense that you had whatever you needed and this works because you give everything you can.

I do not expect to survive on music, partly because my creative drive is neither towards money nor a genre of music that might make me that sort of money. But your perception on music and art is only half the story. I don't know how many people become musicians to become rich or famous, but many musicians do see it as 'work' if it is something they spend a lot of time working at. I doubt there is a session musician or soundtrack writer in the world who regards their music as not work and which should be free to everyone.

I may be being generational here but my experience is that usually musicians have to work bloody hard to make their music known and heard. Perhaps the ease of technology and internet know makes that less the case and I am living in the past - but many of the big bands that still play gigged and played and recorded like fuck to get where they are. I always had huge respect for such artists, and include early blues etc musicians who became maestros at their art through long hours of practice, living as bums if necessary, but very open to making money if it came their way. I have respect because I know how much effort it takes to become even competent on a musical instrument. becoming a musician and making a go of it - especially if you are gigging etc takes a lot of determination and commitment - perhaps even obsession, putting everything else second - and at present I don't have the sort of Life I could make that sort of choice to do, nor, perhaps more telling, would want to if i could.....

I do agree that a full time job can be very detrimental to making music - I have one and have to carefully juggle everything to give myself the time to make the music. I also know that without it my wife (who has been unable to work following major surgery) and I would have gone down the pan without it and I would not have been able to afford the equipment to start making music again.

Unfortunately, it is true however. According to the law, the minute you sell a cd, you no longer have the rights to own said CD and it is actually illegal to burn it to your library and sell it. Again, it does not matter what you think or feel is right, the law is the law.

I would say no -- in Judd's example, he purchased a copy and owned the rights to it. If the physical disc is lost or stolen but he still has the mp3 rip, I'd say he retains the right to keep listening to it -- even to burn an audio CDR from the mp3 files if he wants. Why not?

That's very different from selling the CD used, but keeping a high-quality rip or a CDR copy.

Making a copy of a entire CD freely available in digital form to be enjoyed on another person's iPod or to be burned to CDR, though, is a different kettle of fish.Forrest

I'm sorry I keep coming back to a side-point of the discussion, but it's really a part that bothers me. Now I know you guys aren't holier than thou, based on the discussion. So I have a question for the musicians here, (if you're still reading this at all).

If you truly think ripping a cd before selling it is detrimental to what you do, would you prefer that people not buy new music from you at all, if you knew in advance that's what they're going to do? This is more of a question for Mike and Forrest, because the above quote Paul says "ufortunately" this is the law... maybe Paul you don't see it as a negative, but then again, maybe the question is for you too, for the reason that these people are going to break the law once they buy your cd.

Again, if you'd say no, I understand it's not from a self-righteous position, but only if you really contend that it's detrimental to the scene, or the musician. So would you take their money?

My 2 cents. As has been said, this second-hand issue is a very grey area. There are second-hand stores and plenty of avenues on the web. I've not heard big labels complaining much about second-hand sales (but I'm not particularly listening either). I'm sure there are lots of people who buy physical albums knowing full well they may just rip it and sell the pristine copy. And with the price of downloads getting higher at many stores, you might as well buy the album, rip then sell it if the price is right ... you might actually get the album cheaper than buying the download.

I think the real legal issues are actually very similar to commercial software. You own the right to use the software, you don't own the program. And selling the software can only be done if the company allows the registration to change ownership ... which means you no longer have the right to use the program if sold because it is then registered to someone else. This is of course enforced to some degree with various copy protections schemes available to programmers. With music the enforcement is pretty much impossible, so is largely ignored.

I don't have any stated restrictions on my DataObscura site about selling albums you have bought (and keeping a ripped copy), and not sure I've seen one on any other web label either. It would be unenforceable, and a bit of a put-off to some buyers I'd imagine.

Especially with selling downloads, which are so easily shared, you have to trust the integrity of the buyer. Some of them certainly do respect a kind of unspoken law on these things. Others clearly don't.

I hadn't realized how ambiguous my comment was that Judd excepted above. I was referring there to file sharing an entire CD with others, and not to burning the CD for one's own use. I agree with Mike's position.

You seem to be assuming that all downloads are from people who would not buy a CD in the first place. If this was the case then CD sales would not have tanked like they have with the introduction of high quality downloads. There is enough empirical evidence to indicate there is a connection between the two. As a personal example, when Terraform was released on CD the sales were much lower then expected based upon previous sales of my own releases and Steve Roach's normal sales for a new release. We found shortly after the album was released that someone had made high quality mp3s (320kps) of the tracks, had scanned all the artwork including the front cover, inside foldout, the extra postcards, and the CD itself. All were then zipped into a file and uploaded to a bittorrent site. This was the first case any of us has encountered of this kind. You could argue that no one was interested so they didn't buy the CD, well thousands of people were interested enough to at least download it. I won't argue that all of those thousands of download were potential sales, but sales have been so low that the label has yet to recoup its costs, and this has made it difficult for me now to release any new material.

I just wanted to add a postmortem to this thread as related to my quote above. I got an email last night from my label informing me that Terraform is now out-of-print for the reasons I stated above and it will not be repressed.

I just wanted to add a postmortem to this thread as related to my quote above. I got an email last night from my label informing me that Terraform is now out-of-print for the reasons I stated above and it will not be repressed.

Sorry to hear that, Loren. I must have picked up one of the last copies of that disc from Soleilmoon a week or two ago. A very nice disc and package that deserved a better fate.